


Fragments

by rainstormdragon



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Cultural genocide, Descendants - Freeform, Gen, Genocide, Hurt No Comfort, Survivors, air nomad culture, air nomads - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormdragon/pseuds/rainstormdragon
Summary: Aang searches for survivors from the Air Nation.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 37





	Fragments

**Author's Note:**

> Because of course he searched for them.

Even the most efficient genocidal maniac misses a couple victims, and Sozin had been no exception.

Aang did not know the numbers, but he recalled the Air Nomads who had been truly nomadic in the style of their ancestors, unlike the monks and nuns and children and elders that he had been raised among. He remembered the sky bison caravans that visited regularly, carrying the scents of foreign spices and strange lands, and long nights when they’d all stayed up late to hear new stories and songs from visiting travelers.

Sozin had hunted down as many as he could, but could he possibly have eradicated all of them? 

Aang wondered sometimes, when he saw the buoyant acrobatics of Ty Lee, the gray eyes of an Earth Kingdom merchant, or a woman wearing a wrap in a style that was eerily familiar. 

Most of them, yes, but all?

So he dared to hope, and when the world could spare him for a time, he went looking.

Some Air Nomads had gone into hiding, blended into the other nations they had traveled so many times, and buried their own history so well that they had killed it as effectively as Sozin had. They bore children who knew their parents’ race as a dangerous secret and nothing more. Children who never learned the ancient prayers, never set a foot in the temples or played the games or spun yarn from bison fur or burned incense to the four winds on the Autumn Equinox. 

But a hundred years is a long time, and knowing who your ancestors were does not mean that you are who they were. 

Aang reminded himself of this over and over, in the black abyss of the night, and Katara reminded him when he was too hurt and angry to remind himself. 

So much, lost. It felt like his ribs closing in, keeping him from drawing a full breath, crushing his heart. He had been an airbending prodigy; so much of his lessons had been focused not on history and culture but on the nuances of bending. He had always thought there would be time later to learn everything about his people. As an older monk, there would have been specific points at which he’d have been encouraged to study it, visiting the great libraries of Omashu, Ba Sing Se, and Caldera City to learn more about the roots of a particular practice or the details of the life of a great airbender of the past. There would have been time. There was supposed to have been  _ time _ . 

Time was one of many things that had been taken from their people.

The bloodline of the Air Nation continued, but the culture was gone. 

There were Sandbenders whose grandparents had joined the tribes in the aftermath of Sozin's comet. But they were as fierce and practical as their native countrymen. Even as their painfully familiar smiles pierced Aang’s heart, he knew before he asked that they would refuse his offer to come back to the temples. His ways were not theirs. The culture he wanted to revive was one that had been carefully hidden for so long that it felt alien to them now. They had no use for peace, and they already had freedom -- a very different freedom than that of their grandparents, but one they prized. 

Some of the Yu Yan, the famed archers who never missed a shot, had eyes too colorless for the Fire Nation, hands shaped more like Aang’s than like Zuko’s. Some of them truly  _ never _ missed a shot. But they had no desire to talk to him. The Yu Yan was a family in itself, and there, they were safe. 

He met a brother and sister who wove fine cloth on the Western islands with looms and motions so familiar that he almost wept. But the cloth they wove did not smell of bison musk and incense or keep the wearer warm in windy heights, and the patterns and dyes were modern.

His search continued. 

A couple Water Tribe villages where lighter skin tones and blacker, smoother hair appeared, and slightly less ships were lost to storms. 

A caravan of traveling merchants who were light on their feet and laughed like birdsong. 

An Earth Kingdom noble family whose delicate-featured daughters were renowned dancers. 

Traces and fragments, and every now and then, a whispered story that hinted at it, or a carefully preserved and hidden garment or piece of jewelry.

A handful of those he found agreed to visit the air temples, showing interest in hearing more about their ancestry. None of them chose to join him to build the Air Nation anew. 

“My parents never spoke of it,” an old woman told Aang sadly. “It was safer to forget. Safer to just be Earth Kingdom.”

“Grandma sang those songs so rarely, and now she’s gone and I only remember some of the words,” a middle-aged man admitted. “Never thought about asking what they meant until it was too late.”

“What’s an Air Mo-mad?” asked a toddler with eyes the color of the sky in a storm, who had to be watched closely because she had no fear of heights. 

It was like finding their bones again, and again, and again. 

Eventually, he gave in to Katara’s plea to stop doing this to himself, gave up the search, and accepted the service of “air acolytes” who would never be more than historians and enthusiasts, would never truly know what it was to belong to his culture. 

He took to the skies that night and wept, letting the winds catch and bear away his tears. The war was over, and three nations lived in harmony. He had fulfilled his trust. But he had failed his own people. 

The Air Nation was gone.


End file.
